


no idea who to be (but the wrong choices are easy to see)

by beepbedeep



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Izzie and Casey kinda talk about how they feel!, Telling the truth is hard, emotional vulnerability? honesty?, i don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 11:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21475000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: If Casey is not her mom, not her dad, and not her brother, what is left?
Relationships: Casey Gardner/Izzie
Kudos: 60





	no idea who to be (but the wrong choices are easy to see)

Casey is not her mother. 

She is NOT going to cheat on someone she says she loves, she is not going to rip a hole in the fabric of anyone else’s life, or burn everything around her down because she’s having a bad day. Casey is not Elsa.

But, it takes two people to ruin a relationship she thinks, (she hopes, because maybe Evan wants something other than this too, maybe he’s been quietly hinting at it for months, maybe she’s not the only reason that someone perfect won’t work out) and her dad stayed silent in a marriage that wasn’t making him happy for just as long as Elsa, so Casey doesn’t think she wants to be him either. 

Her parents have both spent so much of their lives miserable, because they wouldn’t talk to each other because they had an oppressive sense of duty binding them up, and, basically, Casey’s never had a model for a healthy relationship in her life. There is her brother, and his girlfriend, but what they do together is so extremely weird that Casey isn’t desperate enough to look for guidance from Road Rage Paige yet. 

So if Casey is not her mom, not her dad, and not her brother, what is left? If she won’t destroy, ignore, or ask for advice, then what’s left? 

As one could say, Casey decides to be herself. She tells him. There really isn’t another option. It sucks, it SUCKS SO MUCH, and hurts like someone’s yanking off her limb, but the pain from admitting feels much cleaner than the ache of deceit. After all, Casey Gardner is NOT a terrible person. 

She tells him.

The ugly truth is that maybe she would have never said anything, would have ridden out this lying and denial until Evan broke up with her, or she and Izzie stopped being friends (because this limbo of never saying anything isn’t sustainable, they can’t handle so much pressure for this long and something breaks, but something was always going to break because there is no way they were getting out of this alive.) 

But, the current plan had been to ignore the problem, and it really was going fine. (that’s not true, she was sad and maybe doing the Elsa thing – waiting and waiting for a breaking point – or the dad thing – ignoring and ignoring until everything you love is ashes, but then Izzie, of course because she is everything good in the world, goes and actually says something about it.) 

Izzie is brave, and Casey wants to join her in it, and honestly all she’s really been doing (with Evan, with her life) is waiting for Izzie to say something. (waiting for Izzie. Casey has been waiting for Izzie for so long and now she’s here and this might be the beginning of everything.) Casey wonders if she should be upset, should be mad at Izzie for making this thing between them a spoken reality, for forcing them into dealing with their subtext, but all she can do is try to keep her feet on the ground (trying not to float away) because Izzie likes her and she likes Izzie and this is the best thing that’s ever happened to her.


End file.
